On the First Day after the Blizzard, the Only People Who Showed up to Work in the Senate Were Women

Senator Lisa Murkowski, fittingly of Alaska, was one of very few people to show up to work in the Senate Tuesday morning after the crazy Snowmageddon of the preceding days. She was there, even though there wasn't officially Senate business, because by Senate rules a session had to be convened, if only to just be adjourned. There's usually nothing particularly notable about a Senate day like this, but yesterday, something did strike Senator Murkowski. Her quote comes from The Washington Post:

“As we convene this morning, you look around the chamber, the
presiding officer is female. All of our parliamentarians are female.
Our floor managers are female. All of our pages are female.”

Now is that probably a coincidence? Sure. There was a skeleton crew there to just do the required business so that real work could be pushed until conditions improve. There's no way that anyone planned for the chamber to be exclusively full of women. But it is a symbolically exciting occurrence. It points to a future that is fittingly and appropriately more female, and it is hard not to be inspired by the optics of such a day, even if it were just a fluke. But Senator Murkowski isn't so sure "fluke" is the right word.

“Perhaps it speaks to the hardiness of women,” she added, “that put on
your boots and put your hat on and get out and slog through the mess
that’s out there.”

Guys, she's not wrong. Even if the Senators are stuck out of town in their home states, you can't tell me there aren't some male staffers who could have made it in. We all like to watch Netflix and drink on a Tuesday afternoon, but the men of the Senate need to make a better showing next time.

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